RUINS OF WAR by John Connell

In the winter of 1945, seven months after the Nazi defeat, Munich is in ruins. Mason Collins—former Chicago police detective, U.S. soldier, and prisoner-of-war—is now Chief Warrant Officer of the American Zone of Occupation. It’s his job to enforce the law in a place where order has been obliterated. And his job just became much more dangerous.

A killer is stalking the devastated city—one who has knowledge of human anatomy, enacts mysterious rituals with his prey, and seems to pick victims at random. Relying on his wit and instincts, Mason must venture into dangerous places that put his own life at risk: from interrogation rooms with unrepentant Nazi war criminals to penetrating the U.S. Army’s own black market.

But what Mason doesn’t know is that the killer he’s chasing is stalking him as well…

“A thrilling hunt…gripping and gruesome.”—James Becker, bestselling author of The Lost Testament

“Ruins of War is a well-crafted, classic police tale set in postwar 1945 Munich, a city that could double as the living room of hell. Mason Collins, a military cop, actually asked to be transferred there, and immediately has to find a killer who is preying on the citizens, adding terror to abject misery. Mason’s pursuit of the madman takes him though a ruined landscape, filled with inhabitants as shattered as the city they live in.”—Larry Bond, author of Red Phoenix and Shattered Trident

“John Connell’s Ruins of War is the best historical crime novel I’ve read all year. As vivid a sense of time and place as anything by Alan Furst, a killer as horrifying as any in Thomas Harris, and a central character I’m sure we’ll be reading about for years to come.”—Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest and Hop Alley

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John was born in Atlanta then grew up in Ohio, New York and Virginia before ending up in Atlanta again at the age of 13. He has a BA in Anthropology, and has been a jazz pianist, a stock boy in a brassiere factory, a machinist, repairer of newspaper racks, and a printing-press operator. He is a motion picture camera operator by trade and a writer by passion. He lives with his wife in Paris, France, where he is at work on the next Mason Collins adventure.